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2. Nature was considered to be morally uplifting. They often expressed the idea
that man had a deep relationship with nature. They considered the natural world to be
a better teacher than scholarly learning.
3. The style and the language became closer to everyday speech. The Romantic
poets rejected the idea of imitating classical models. The balance and symmetry of
classical Greek and Latin literature was too restrictive of the creative imagination.
The wrote in the simple “language really used by men” (Lyrical Ballads,
Wordsworth).
4. The romantic nostalgia for the past. They wanted to flee from the spiritual
emptiness of the Industrial Revolution and took refuge in the past. The Middle Ages
had a special appeal to them. Old ballads with their magical atmosphere and haunting
settings, became popular. The historical novel was one of the most favourite forms of
fiction in the romantic period.
5. The romantic heroes are social outcasts and outsiders, such as Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein, Byron’s Childe Harold.
The Romantic poets are traditionally grouped into two generations. The poets
of the first generation (William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor
Coleridge) were greatly influenced by the French Revolution. They thought it
represented a split up from the restrictions of the past. However, their enthusiasm for
the French Revolution soon disappeared and disillusionment set in. So they turned
their attention to nature and to the simple problems of life. The landscape was
prominent in their works.
The poets of the second generation, George Gordon Byron, Percy Bysshe
Shelley and John Keats were more revolutionary. They all had intense but short lives.
They lived through the disillusionment of the post-revolutionary period. The Britain
they lived in was fearful of the possibility of revolution, and, consequently, deeply
repressive.
4.2. WILLIAM BLAKE
William Blake is considered a central figure in the history of both the poetry
and visual arts of the Romantic Age.
The poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827) was largely
disconnected from the literature movements of his time, that’s why Blake was
unrecognized during his lifetime. He was considered gifted but insane by his
contemporaries for his views. However, Blake is highly assessed by later critics for
his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical
undercurrents within his work. Among his most important works are Songs of
Innocence and Experience (1794).
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A characteristic feature of Blake’s poetry is opposition. In his Songs of
Innocence and Experience several poems are written in pairs, contrasting states of
human young and old ages.
Blake’s poetry is highly symbolic. Some symbols are easily understandable:
innocence is represented by children, flowers, lambs.
4.3. THE FIRST GENERATION OF ROMANTIC POETS:
LAKE POETS (WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, ROBERT SOUTHEY)
After William Blake, among the earliest Romanticists were the Lake Poets,
a small group of friends, including William Wordsworth ['wɜ:dzwәθ] (1770–1850),
Samuel Taylor Coleridge ['kәulridʒ] (1772–1834), Robert Southey [sauði] (1774–
1843). Lake Poets are called so because they all lived for a time in the beautiful Lake
District in the North-West of England. They dedicated much of what they wrote to
Nature. Legends, tales, songs and ballads became part of the creative method of the
romanticists. The publishing of Lyrical Ballads in 1798 is taken as the beginning of
this period.
William Wordsworth was the greatest representative of the Lake School Poets.
He grew up in the Lake District, a place of mountains and lakes. His father died
leaving him an orphan at the age of thirteen. His two uncles sent him to Cambridge
University. After graduating he toured France and became deeply involved in the
cause of the French Revolution. But later he was greatly disappointed in the outcome
of the revolution. He thought that it had brought only cruelty and bloodshed. So
William withdrew into the quiet of the country.
There he met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who became his closest friend.
In 1797 the two poets published their best work Lyrical Ballads.
The most characteristic themes of Wordsworth’s poetry were the defence of the
common country people, their feelings and beliefs, the beauty of nature. Every object
in nature was in his eyes a source of poetry. Wordsworth’s poetry emphasizes the
value of living in harmony with his natural environment, far from the spirituallybankrupt city.
In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1798) Wordsworth discusses what he sees as
the elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the “real language of men”. Here,
Wordsworth gives his famous definition of poetry, as “the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings” which “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”
The poems in Lyrical Ballads were mostly by Wordsworth, though
Coleridge contributed, one of the great poems of English literature, the long Rime of
the Ancient Mariner, a tragic ballad about the survival of one sailor through a series
of supernatural events on his voyage through the South Seas, and which involves the
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symbolically significant slaying of an albatross. Coleridge’s poetry often deals with
the mysterious, the supernatural and the extraordinary. Coleridge wanted to give the
supernatural a colouring of everyday reality.
4.4. THE SECOND GENERATION OF ROMANTIC POETS:
JOHN KEATS, LORD BYRON, PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
John Keats (1795–1821)
Keats had serious health problems throughout his life and died at the age of 26
of tuberculosis. The brevity of his life makes his literary achievements even more
astonishing. The main theme of his poetry is the conflict between the real world of
suffering, death and decay and the ideal world of beauty, imagination and eternal
youth. Love was also an important theme in his work, although the love found in
Keats’s poems rarely has a happy ending.
Keats developed his own very distinctive style, which is based on lush,
sensuous imagery and precise descriptive detail.
The five Odes of 1819, Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to
a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy and To Autumn are the crowning achievement of
the English Romanticism. Keats reached the culminating point of his creative powers
in them. They are lyrical meditations on art and life, experience and dreams. These
odes are rich in exquisite and sensuous detail.
Lord Byron (1788–1824)
In all his poetry there is a current of gloom and pessimism.
Byron was born into an ancient aristocratic family in London. He was lame and
felt distressed about it all his life, yet, thanks to his strong will and regular training,
he became an excellent rider, a champion swimmer and a boxer. He had a beautiful
manly profile. His contemporary young men tried to imitate his clothes, his manners
and even his limping gait. He seemed proud, tragic and melancholic. His actions
often denied social conventions. His lifestyle was dissolute. After graduating from
Cambridge University, Byron started on a tour through Portugal, Spain, Greece,
Turkey and Albania. He returned home in 1811. A trip to Europe resulted in the first
two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage ['tʃaild 'hӕrәldz 'pilgrimidʒ] (1812),
a mock-heroic epic of a young man’s adventures in Europe, but also a sharp satire
against London society. The poem contains autobiographical elements, as Byron
generated some of the storyline from experience gained during his European journey.
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The main character, Childe Harold by name, came from an old aristocratic
family. His ancestors were men of great courage and heroism. Harold’s life was very
different from theirs, it is full of pleasure and entertainment. But then he only feels
weariness and discontent. He lost faith in friendship and was disappointed in the
world of lies in which he found himself. Hoping to find Good in other countries he
left England.
Canto the First describes Portugal and Spain. Byron shows his surprise at the
contrast between the splendor of the land, where “fruits of fragrance blush on every
tree”, and the poverty of the people. In the Spanish scenes the poet shows the
people’s struggle against Napoleon’s invasion which the poet witnessed during the
stay in Spain in 1809–1810.
Canto the Second is devoted to Albania and Greece. Byron admires the
Albanians for their kindness, generosity and hospitality. But when Harold comes
to Greece he is disappointed. The miserable state of the Greek people under the yoke
of the Turks arouses Byron’s indignation and makes him recall the glorious past
of Greece.
Canto the Third describes the beautiful scenery of Switzerland. Pictures of
nature — now calm and serene, now stormy as the feelings of the poet himself,
alternate with philosophical reflections.
Canto the Fourth, dealing with Italy, depicts people and events of ancient
history. Byron calls Italy the Mother of Art. Byron puts forth the idea that true glory
is achieved through creative activity, and not by birth and power.
Childe Harold is a sensitive, disillusioned and generous wanderer. But he is
merely a passive onlooker unlike Byron himself who tried to be an active fighter for
freedom. Byron’s other heroes, such as Don Juan ['dɒn 'dʒu:әn], are strong
individuals who are disillusioned in life and fight single-handed against the injustice
and cruelty.
Byron achieved enormous fame and influence throughout Europe with works
exploiting the violence and drama of their exotic and historical settings. However,
despite the success of Childe Harold and other works, Byron was forced to leave
England for good in 1816 and seek asylum on the Continent. Here he joined Percy
Bysshe and Mary Shelley on the shores of Lake Geneva.
Then, from 1817 to 1823, he lived in Italy where he joined the secret
organization of the Carbonari. It was engaged in the struggle against the Austrian
oppressors.
Then the Greek war against Turkey attracted his attention. He went to Greece
to take part in the struggle for national independence. His restless life ended there. He
fell ill with fever and died in 1824. He was 36 years old. His death was mourned by
the progressive people throughout Europe. Pushkin called Byron a poet of freedom.
Goethe spoke of him in his Faustus.
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Byron embodied the Romantic spirit and gave it a recognizable face. He left
behind him the enduring image of the Byronic hero: a gloomy, unsatisfied social
outcast, a wanderer in foreign lands, a fighter against social injustice, who in his
quest for self-realization, refuses to accept social codes and conventions.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
Percy Bysshe Shelley ['pɜ:si 'biʃ 'ʃeli] is best known for poems such as Ode to
the West Wind, To a Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die.
Like Byron, he came of an aristocratic family and like Byron he broke with his
class at an early age.
Shelley was educated at Eton public school and Oxford University. There he
wrote a pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism ['eɪθɪɪzәm] for which he was expelled
from university. His father forbade him to come home. Shelley had an independent
spirit, so he broke with his family and class forever. He was an individualist and an
idealist who rejected the institutions of family, church, marriage and the Christian
faith. Shelley’s ideas were anarchic, and he was considered dangerous by the society
of his time. Shelley was an atheist, a radical thinker and a marginal. He travelled
from one town to another, took an active part in the Irish liberation movement. As for
his personal life, he was married twice. He left his first wife Harriet when he fell in
love with 16-year-old Mary Shelly. Together with Mary they travelled around Europe
staying for a while in Geneva where they were joined by Lord Byron. But the
Shelley’s returned to London in 1816 when Percy’s first wife Harriet drowned herself
in Hyde Park. Shelley tried to win custody of his two children by his first marriage,
but his reputation as an atheist worked against him. So, he was disillusioned with
Britain, got into debt and was suffering from ill-health. Shelley moved with his
family to Italy in 1818.
Four years later, in 1822 the poet was drowned in Italy. He was only 29 years
old. When his body was washed ashore he was cremated by Byron and his other
friends. His remains were buried in Rome.
His close circle of admirers included the most progressive thinkers of the day.
Shelley became an idol of the next three or four generations of poets. Shelley’s poem
The Masque of Anarchy (1819) calls for nonviolence in protest and political action. It
is perhaps the first modern statement of the principle of nonviolent protest. Mahatma
Gandhi’s ['ɡændi] passive resistance was influenced and inspired by Shelley’s verse,
and Gandhi would often quote the poem to vast audiences.
Shelley wrote his poem The Masque of Anarchy when he got the news that the
workers of Manchester had been attacked by government troops.
Many of his poems address social and political issues. However, he is best
remembered for his lyrical masterpieces. One of them is Music, when Soft Voices Die.
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4.5. THREE TYPES OF THE ROMANTIC NOVEL:
THE GOTHIC NOVEL (MARY SHELLEY),
THE HISTORICAL NOVEL (WALTER SCOTT),
AND THE NOVEL OF MANNERS (JANE AUSTEN)
The Gothic novel: Mary Shelley (1797–1851)
and her Frankenstein
Mary Shelley, Percy’s wife, is remembered as the author of Frankenstein (1818).
The public taste for Gothic novels first appeared in the second half of the
XVIII century. Gothic novels were based on tales of the macabre, the fantastic and
the supernatural. They were usually set in haunted castles, graveyards, ruins and wild
picturesque landscapes. This type of novel satisfied the Romantic appetite for wild
natural settings, the Middle Ages, and free flow of imagination. The greatest Gothic
novel of the Romantic period is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern
Prometheus [prәˈmiːθɪәs].
Mary met the famous young poet Percy Shelley when she was only sixteen,
and they went to Europe together. In 1816 they met the exciting poet Lord Byron.
They stayed at his villa in Switzerland to write. They all wrote frightening,
supernatural tales which created the literary vampire genre.
Mary’s story was Frankenstein. Mary was only eighteen when she wrote it.
The plot of the story is said to have come from a nightmare she had, following
a conversation about galvanism and the feasibility of returning a corpse or assembled
body parts to life. Sitting around a log fire at Byron’s villa, the company also amused
themselves by reading German ghost stories. Frankenstein was about a lonely,
unhappy monster. A young student called Frankenstein created this monster. The
monster wanted the student to love him, but he couldn’t. So the monster got furious
and started to kill people.
Mary’s life was unhappy, too. Her mother, sister, and her two children died
young. Then Percy died in 1822, when Mary was only 24. She lived until she was 53.
Frankenstein starts with Captain Robert Walton writing letters to his sister. It
takes place at an unspecified time in the XVIII century.
The novel Frankenstein is written in epistolary form, documenting a fictional
correspondence between Captain Robert Walton and his sister, Margaret Walton
Saville. Walton is a failed writer and captain who sets out to explore the North Pole
and expand his scientific knowledge in hopes of achieving fame. During the voyage,
the crew spots a dog sled driven by a gigantic figure. A few hours later, the crew
rescues a nearly frozen man named Victor Frankenstein. Frankenstein has been in
pursuit of the gigantic man observed by Walton’s crew. Frankenstein starts to
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recover; he sees in Walton the same obsession that has destroyed him, and recounts
a story of his life’s miseries to Walton as a warning. The recounted story serves as the
frame for Frankenstein’s narrative.
Frankenstein is one of the most popular horror stories of all times. Why, do
you think, Frankenstein has become so popular? That’s because of the image of the
monster who, in fact, is a lonely and unhappy creature. This story proves that any
living creature, no matter what it looks like, needs company, recognition and love of
others. And the absence of those will surely lead to development of cruelty, fury and
anger, like in the monster of the novel.
Thus, the problems raised in the story are:
1) alienation;
2) the interference of man in nature;
3) overconfidence in the powers of science.
The influence of the Gothic novel can be seen today in the popularity of horror
fiction and films.
The Historical novel: Walter Scott (1771–1832)
One of the most popular novelists during the Romantic period was Sir Walter
Scott. He is called the father of the English historical novel.
He was born in Edinburgh. When he was two years old he got polio. It left him
lame for the rest of his life. So he spent much of his boyhood on his grandfather’s
farm in Scotland. He gained first-hand knowledge of the old Scottish traditions,
legends and folk ballads from local peasants and farmers with whom he was on
friendly terms. When he grew up he collected and studied native ballads, legends and
folk songs. His literary career began with the publication of the collection of Scottish
ballads. But soon he turned to writing in prose. His novels appeared anonymously.
Nobody knew he was a writer. Within 16 years he wrote 29 novels many of which are
about Scotland and about the struggle of this country for independence.
Scott worked hard. In recognition of his work, he was made a baronet in 1820.
He was very popular among his contemporaries. His novels reached wide audiences
in Britain and abroad. At the height of his career a misfortune struck him: in 1825 the
publishing firm where he had been partner went bankrupt. Walter Scott had to pay
a large sum of money. He refused all offers of assistance and spent the rest of his life
writing to pay off an enormous debt. This affected his health and he died in 1832.
The major elements in Scott’s works that place him in the Romantic tradition are:
1. His characters are both fictional and real people.
2. The characters are placed against authentic historical backgrounds.
3. He pays much attention to the description of the beautiful natural setting and
the lives of common people.
4. He uses regional speech.
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Like many Romantic writers, Scott stepped back into the past. He frequently
used well-known historical figures, and described the political and social context in
which they lived.
Scott arranged his plots and characters so that the reader enters into the lives of
both great and ordinary people. He recognized the important role that ordinary people
played in history.
Scott is widely regarded as a master of dialogue. He captured the regional
speech of highland peasants as well as the sophisticated, polished eloquence of
knights and aristocrats.
He created rich historical canvases with landscape and nature descriptions. His
descriptions of the customs and habits of the people are true-to-life and realistic.
Scott’s career reached its peak with Ivanhoe ['aivәnhәu]. This novel deals with
the English history of the XII century, the period of the Middle Ages. It is set against
the conflict between Normans and Saxons in England.
Plot: King Richard the Lionheart is fighting an unsuccessful crusade in the
Holy Land. The Saxon leader, Cedric, hopes to restore a Saxon to the throne by
arranging a marriage between Lady Rowena and Athelstane, both of whom are of
royal Saxon descent. So, when Cedric’s son, Ivanhoe, falls in love with Lady Rowena
and threatens to ruin his pans, he sends him away on the crusades. King Richard and
Ivanhoe return to England together. They take part, incognito, in a tournament and
defeat the Norman knights. Ivanhoe reveals his identity.
There are many famous historical figures in this novel like Richard the
Lionheart and Robin Hood. But the hero of the novel, Ivanhoe, is a fictional
character. He is an ordinary knight, no different from thousands of others.
His popularity in England and abroad did much to form the modern stereotype
of Scottish culture.
The novel of manners: Jane Austen (1775–1817)
Jane Austen developed a type of fiction that is called “the novel of manners”,
where characterization and plot are very important. In her work, social hierarchies are
reflected in manners and conversation. Manners are described with gentle irony and
balance. But there is very little description of the wider social, political or historical
context. Her novels also contain penetrating psychological insights into young female
consciousness. Austen’s characters are independent and self-sufficient. They aspire to
Romantic individualism and freedom, but have to conform to social conventions.
Jane Austen’s plots, though fundamentally comic, highlight the dependence of
women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security.
Austen describes the hardships that women faced: they usually did not inherit
money, could not work and their only chance in life depended on the man they
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married. She reveals not only the difficulties a woman faced in her day, but also what
was expected of men and of the careers they had to follow. This she does with wit
and humour and with endings where all characters, good or bad, receive exactly what
they deserve.
Her work brought her little personal fame and only a few positive reviews
during her lifetime, but the publication of her nephew’s A Memoir of Jane Austen
introduced her to a wider public, and by the 1940s she had become accepted as
a major writer. Austen’s works include Pride and Prejudice (1813), Sense and
Sensibility (1811), and Emma.
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PART V. THE XIX CENTURY LITERATURE. REALISM
5.1. THE VICTORIAN NOVEL (1837–1901). REALISM
It was in the Victorian era (1837–1901) that the novel became the leading
literary genre in English. Women played an important part in this rising popularity
both as authors and as readers. Circulating libraries were a further factor in the rising
popularity of the novel. They allowed books to be borrowed for an annual
subscription.
The 1830s and 1840s saw the rise of social novel. The poor were not profiting
from England’s economic prosperity. Stories of the working class poor were directed
toward middle class to help create sympathy and promote change.
The greatness of the novelists of this period lies not only in their truthful
description of contemporary life, but also in their profound humanism. The poorest,
the most unprivileged sections of the population were described by Charles Dickens.
He looked into the darkest corners of the large cities.
5.2. CHARLES DICKENS
Charles Dickens [tʃa:lz 'dikinz] (1812–1870) was born in a small town on the
southern coast of England. His father was a clerk at the office of a large naval station
there, and the family lived on his small salary. They belonged to the lower middle
class and there was always talk between the parents about money, bills and debts.
Charles and his eldest sister didn’t go to school for a long time. Their father
lost his job and was imprisoned for debt. All the property the family had was sold,
and the boy was put to work in a blacking factory. He worked hard washing bottles
for shoe-polish and putting labels on them, while his father, mother, sisters and
brothers all lived in debtors’ prison. Many pictures were stored in his memory, and he
later described this unhappy time in David Copperfield and Little Dorrit.
In about a year the Dickenses received a small sum of money after the death of
a relative, so all the debts were paid. Charles got a chance to go to school again. But
he left school when he was twelve. He had to continue his education by himself
visiting regularly the British Museum reading-room. Then he first got a job as
a newspaper reporter, then as a parliamentary reporter. He started writing funny street
sketches. Thus he discovered his writing abilities almost accidentally.
His most popular works include: The Pickwick Papers (1835–1837),
A Christmas Carol (1843), Dombey and Son (1846–1848), The Old Curiosity Shop,
Little Dorrit (1855–1857), Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, Great
Expectations (1860–1861).
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